How ‘long’ is the minute that flies by versus the one that crawls by? Is time our creation? Who put 24 hours in day? 60 seconds in a minute? Yet are our lives not governed by the 24 clock? What is your own relationship to time? Do you ever feel that time is devouring you? Has the clock made us slaves to time or can we say they have made us its masters?
There are two main experiences of time: the left versus the right brain experience. –The left side of the brain: the side that deals with logic, reasoning, analysing, the detail, the process, the step by step approach, evaluating and measuring performance.
–The right side is concerned with the subtler, intuitive and creative aspects of life. It is concerned with the sense of, the feeling of, the poetry of things. It seeks to understand the significance of things in relation to the whole or bigger picture.
These two sides create quite different experiences of life; being logical is quite a different experience to being creative.
Left-side, right-side and time
The left side deals in linear time; in the process with the expectation of the result at the end. Time is seen as a commodity, a resource and something to be packaged. We have deadlines and worries about meeting them. We have time management; prioritising and organizing our time to create more time so we can do more. We seek to understand the world in a very logical way.
The right side deals in being in the moment and experiencing the present. To experience and feel we need time. When we are operating out of a sense of urgency we have no time to be and experience, for this we have to calm down and slow down. This allows our thoughts to slow down. We become quieter inside and a new set of healing and expansive feelings emerge. We have a sense of something bigger and more harmonious.
Predominately we are a left-sided society, can we move more into the right side?
In order to access the right side we first we need to quieten the constant chatter of the left side. Artistic pursuits are great for this. However, as left-siders, as soon as we pick up that pencil what happens? The chatter heightens: You cant draw. Don’t be silly you know you can never paint that. That is way to complicated for you to do draw etc. Betty Edwards talked about this in her book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. She suggests a number of strategies we can use to by-pass this chatter. One is to copy an upside down picture, all we have to do is focus on copying the lines. As we let ourselves become absorbed in this task the chatter of the left brain stops. We find that we become still inside our heads and there is a sense of timelessness and of time standing still.
‘Two hours went by and it felt like no time and then when I turned my picture around it was amazing. It was as if someone else had drawn it. It was as if I had stepped out of time, there was no sense of time passing or the pressure of time. There was a sense of timeless being and of having all the time in the world.’
What impact do such experiences have on our relationships? Coming into relationship with others after such experiences there is a sense of there being time for others, of patience and of having the time to care, love, embrace and accept others in.
Another group of people who speak of experiencing timelessness are people who have had near death experiences. They talk of experiencing being outside their body and looking down on it; of feeling as if they have moved into a different space-time; of experiencing peacefulness; of it feeling as if time has been suspended/no longer exists; of seeing their whole life flash before as if in a second whilst at the same time seeing everything that they ever said and did; of feeling that they have stepped beyond time and of the depth of their experience. Many say how the impact of this experience was so powerful that on coming back into time-based experience they feel slowed-down, more patient, more understanding and with a sense of a spiritual level.
Another tool to access the right side is to be the observer.
There are two worlds to observe, the outer and the inner one of my thoughts, feelings, concerns and emotions. As an observer don’t judge, worry about or try to control your thoughts and emotions. Just watch them and lovingly accept whatever comes up. Just observe and see how they then lose their control over you, how time slows down and peace walks in. We feel a sense of power return and good about ourselves once again.
Then going back into doing you feel more relaxed, less anxious, less judgmental and freer. In linear time we are what we do. Here I am what I am. Coming into doing from this experience it is as if I am an actor, I am aware I am performing and of the audience.
Some scenes like a sunset, the ocean also give us the experience of a sense of timelessness, of harmony and of all being well.
So does time exist?
Yes and no. In left sided time we are in limited time, time is our master. In right sided time we have a sense of being the master of time and that we can create time. We go beyond time and there is a sense of wholeness and wellness.
